Visualizing Networks of Cultural Discourses in Latin American Electronic Literature

There are relatively few studies that explore the interdisciplinarity between electronic literature and digital humanities research methods. The present paper addresses this lack by combining close reading and distant reading methodologies to analyze networks of cultural discourses in a corpus of 30 Latin American e-lit works published from 1995 to 2020. To conduct the research, three network graphs were created using Gephi, an open-source software for the exploration and analysis of network visualizations. The graphs study the following relations between the e-lit works and the cultural discourses: the frequency of primary, secondary and tertiary discourses, the degree of multi-discourse, and the degree of cultural discourse co-occurrence. The results show the appearance of unexpected discourse variations and new co-occurrence patterns, the benefits of network graphs for revealing e-lit works’ families, and the potential use of data visualization techniques to study e-lit databases. Overall, the paper demonstrates the utility of digital humanities research methods to further examine electronic literature materials.

Iteracies of feeling

Computational readings of culture allow us to pose new questions or create new cultural forms supporting new forms of critical thinking and reading. Yet the machine may not be able to identify some of the qualities, such as emotion, that might be central to the question raised. Using the Next Rembrandt project as a case study, this paper suggests an approach to consider the medium as the site of meaning making in digital culture and how this affects critical practice using Raymond Williams, David Berry and Jacques Derrida. In the first part, I consider the idea of reading with machines and how this might be considered within the medium. The second part uses iteracy to find meaning in the models and how this might reveal new critical paths through readings of the image. The final part presents a reading of the digital object itself and how these can be used to create a space for meaning to come into being. Through this, the article raises questions about critical techniques for understanding the material object in distant reading methodologies asongoing research.

Report on BAAL ‘Language in Africa’ SIG meetings Reading in African languages: Developing literacies and reading methodologies

This report describes ongoing research on reading in African languages. It draws mainly on contributions from two British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) ‘Language in Africa’ (LiA) Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings: the LiA SIG strand at BAAL 2013 and the seminar on Reading Methodologies in African Languages held at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in January 2014. This report will only cover contributions that focused on reading research and practice.

Corroborating the ages of walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma)

Fish ageing researchers have long recognised the importance of validating age-reading methodologies. The strongest age validations require the acquisition of ageing structures from fish of known-ages, or specimens whose ages are appropriate for bomb carbon validation. Often such specimens are extremely difficult or impossible to acquire so researchers have sought alternatives to validation. The alternative to age validation is age corroboration. Corroboration of a fish ageing method occurs when fish ages are found to be consistent with some ancillary information when comparisons are made in an unbiased manner. The question pursued in this study is how desirable are such comparisons from a scientific viewpoint. Information is presented that corroborates otolith ages for walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma), one of the largest groundfish fisheries in the world. Walleye pollock ages were corroborated using marginal increment analysis, ages following the strong 1978 year class in the eastern Bering Sea, and a comparison of ages read from otoliths with ages read from vertebrae. A new statistical method is suggested for comparing otolith and vertebra age readings. The walleye pollock example demonstrated that corroborating evidence can improve confidence in fish ages and ageing techniques.